Internationally recognized marketing scholar joins Jones School

The Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business is pleased to announce the addition of internationally renowned marketing scholar Dr. Wagner Kamakura as of July 1. He begins his tenure at the school as the Jesse H. Jones Professor of Marketing, a chair funded by the generous contribution of Houston Endowment.

Professor Kamakura joins the Jones School faculty from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, where he was the Ford Motor Company Professor of Global Marketing. Prior faculty positions include the University of Iowa, University of Pittsburgh and Vanderbilt University. Before entering academia, Kamakura worked in market analysis, forecasting and planning in Brazil.

“Professor Kamakura’s strength in analyzing market segmentation, customer relationship management, and quantitative models of consumer choice will bring strengths to our already robust marketing group by raising the number of winners of the prestigious O’Dell Award for research in marketing,” said Bill Glick, dean of the Jones School and H. Joe Nelson III Professor of Management. “Recruiting a top scholar like Professor Kamakura is crucial for building a premier business school and is only possible with the support of the community, particularly the Houston Endowment which continues to support the Jones School.”

Kamakura is a co-author of Market Segmentation: Conceptual and Methodological Foundations, as well as over one hundred articles in academic journals in marketing and other disciplines. He has served as the editor of the Journal of Marketing Research, area editor of Marketing Science and associate editor of the Journal of Consumer Research and is currently a member of the editorial boards of the International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Retailing and Marketing Science. His current research interests are in consumption and time-use analysis, efficiency analysis, choice modeling, customer relationship management, market segmentation, marketing analytics. His paper “Socioeconomic status and consumption in an emerging economy” was recently named best paper by the Marketing Science Institute in a special issue of the International Journal of Research in Marketing on Emerging Economies.

“I am delighted to be back in Texas, my point of entry to the U.S. as a graduate student,” said Kamakura. “I look forward to working as a colleague with old friends and co-authors, as well as forming new friendships and co-authorships at Rice.”

Professor Kamakura holds a Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Texas at Austin, an M.S. in industrial engineering from the University of Sao Paulo (Brazil), an MBA from the Getulio
Vargas Foundation (Brazil) and a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the Institute of
Technological Aeronautics (Brazil).